


It May Be Lost

by windfallswest



Series: Love or War [6]
Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, New Warriors
Genre: M/M, Pesach | Passover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 17:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10644459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest
Summary: Vance looked around at the faces at the table, new friends and old, and it felt right. This team, these people. Not long ago, he hadn't been sure he wanted this—this team, this name, this fight on top of all the other fights. Now he knew: this was where he belonged.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have finally written something for this series that contains NO SMUT WHATSOEVER. 
> 
> Takes place back between _You Can't Blame Gravity_ and _In Spite of Ourselves_ , post-series and post Spider-Verse but before _Something That Finds You_.

"Isn't Passover coming up?" Robbie asked from his position sprawled on the sectional.

Vance looked up from the article he was reading on the computer, nonplussed. "Er, I suppose."

"Because there's that whole thing where you ban pizza for a week and then we have dinner theatre," Robbie continued. 

"I never banned pizza," Vance felt compelled to point out. "I just reorganised the kitchen so I wouldn't accidentally—I mean, do you think people would want to?"

Robbie flopped up onto the arm so he could look at Vance right-side up. "It's _tradition_. Right? I mean, none of the rest of us were Jewish and we still did it."

Vance hadn't actually been intending to have a Seder. None of the rest of _this_ team was Jewish either, so far as Vance knew. They'd had one at Avengers Academy because Ken had been—and, Robbie was right, it was good for team-building as well as cultural education. They'd done other cultural observances, too. 

God, what had happened to Ken. What had happened to all of them.

It was good to see Robbie engaging with something, though. "Sure. It's good for the team to spend some time together when no one's life is in danger."

 

And that was how Vance found himself clearing all the chametz out of Mount Wundagore's kitchen. The team was a little surprised. The mountain was down in Houston again, so most of them were around. Vance was halfway through his scrambled eggs the next morning when the others started wandering in. Mark was the first to notice.

"Uh, what happened to all the food?"

"It's a Passover thing we always do," Robbie answered enthusiastically. "Everything's in that set of cabinets over there; Vance is too polite to actually throw out other people's food."

"I do not understand," Faira said.

Aracely headed unerringly for the chametz cabinet and . "Vance is Jewish! It's a surface religion. There are lots of rules about food."

"No one else was, but he'd throw a Seder for us every year. It's cool, there's a little play and everything. But you gotta clean out the kitchen first," Robbie explained. 

"Not like anyone else ever did," Vance muttered. Once a year was _not_ too often to clean the kitchen, although Vance could understand why you wouldn't want to do it without telekinesis. 

 

Kaine had seen Vance briefly after they'd arrived back in Houston. He'd flown into the city, and they'd fought some crime, then Kaine had fucked his brains out, taking off again before Vance was even fully unconscious. He'd stopped Vance's half-hearted attempt to follow him short, pressing him back into the stirred sheets with an insult and a kiss.

Aracely, whose cheerful stubbornness was the bane of Kaine's life, dragged him back to the mountain for the whatever-it-was. He wandered into the kitchen after escaping her late in the afternoon and found Vance trying to cook several things at once. Kaine hadn't been aware that Vance could cook anything at all. 

"So...you're throwing a dinner party?"

Vance glanced up at where he was perched on a clear patch of wall at rolled his eyes. "It's a multi-faith Seder. The meal commemorates the escape of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. We tell the story during the meal and remember the sacrifices that made our freedom possible."

Kaine didn't have anything to say to that.

Vance turned back to the vegetables he'd been cutting up, point made. "I hadn't done one in a while, and then one of our students at Avengers Academy was Jewish too and he thought it would be a good idea. When I was younger, I started having Passover with the Warriors just so I wouldn't have to sit through it at home. I didn't even really want to do it, but the hypocrisy of my father—I couldn't understand then how god could not want you to fight back when someone was hurting you; and at the same time I was scared that he'd go too far and I wouldn't be able to control myself. I still have some trouble with that: some battles need to be fought. But I've also come to believe that every punch we throw is a defeat. We have lost something if we let things reach the point where violence is necessary, and I think you agree with me."

Kaine hadn't thought about it from that perspective, but something that before had been jagged and frustrating seemed to click into place in the back of his head. That was why he did what he did, because other solutions had failed. Of course, Kaine wasn't very well-suited to other solutions, so; but however satisfying it was in the moment, violence often left a bad taste in his mouth, afterwards.

"When violence becomes our first answer, we are charging headlong into defeat. And so when someone—like you—decides to stop fighting us, we owe it to the world to make the most of that victory," Vance added. 

 

Vance looked around at the faces at the table, new friends and old, and it felt right. This team, these people. Not long ago, he hadn't been sure he wanted this—this team, this name, this fight on top of all the other fights. Now he knew: this was where he belonged.

The escape from Egypt was history, but it was also a metaphor, Vance found himself explaining before they started telling the story. Today, they used their own struggles to relate to those of the Hebrews', and they thought about what symbolised Egypt in their lives. 

It wasn't the most solemn Seder ever, but at least everyone seemed interested. Robbie enjoyed assigning the roles. Vance had noticed at Avengers Academy that the whole thing hit home with him more than it had when he was fifteen, and no wonder. It was just as well that Robbie wasn't actually Jewish, though; he'd never make it through Erev Yom Kippur. 

Even Sam and Faira were drawn in, although possibly for different reasons. Faira seemed to approve of the parts involving gore, violence, and using the sea to drown the enemies of the people. Jake Waffles was very quiet, the only survivor of a race bred for servitude. 

Kaine wore an inward, deeply thoughtful expression through the whole meal. Vance wondered what was going through his head. What was Kaine's Egypt? He wondered if he could actually get an answer by asking, if they'd come that far. 

Probably not. It was Jewish tradition to commemorate the sacrifices, to remember tragedies even in moments of celebration. But Vance had noticed that most people tried to leave their hardships in the past once they escaped them. Sometimes that worked. In his experience, more often it just kept you from sleeping well at night.

**Author's Note:**

> The way to love anything is to realise that it may be lost.  
> —Gilbert K. Chesterton
> 
> Full disclosure: not actually Jewish, so I wrote this in the spirit of cultural exploration.


End file.
